office the names of the mobsters and the amounts of their investments. The mob members identi- fied by Lau are arrested and arraigned. Soon af- ter, though, as a response to Dent’s mass arrest of Gotham’s mob syndicate, The Joker announces through a taped video message that unless Batman removes his mask and reveals his secret identity, innocent people shall die. Moreover, The Joker sets out to create havoc by plotting the deaths of the individuals responsible for putting away the mobsters, including Police Commissioner Loeb (Colin McFarlane), Judge Surrillo (Nydia Rodriguez Terracina), and, of course, DA Harvey Dent, Gotham’s recently dubbed “White Knight.” By going after these individuals, the Joker craftily positions himself to confront directly the three re- maining figures that represent law and order in Gotham City: Batman, Dent (and by extension, his love interest, Rachel Dawes), and Gordon— who becomes Commissioner Gordon after Loeb is murdered by The Joker.
The Joker’s insidious master plan then involves pitting these remaining key individuals against one another. To accomplish his objective, his minions kidnap both Dent and Dawes, taking them to sepa- rate locations that are both rigged with incendiary bombs and filled with barrels of gasoline. By the time Batman learns of the kidnappings, the loca- tions of Dawes and Dent are switched: Batman believes he’s rescuing Rachel, while Gordon be- lieves he’s rescuing Dent—not so. Batman dis- covers Dent just moments before the bombs detonate, with gasoline destroying the left side of Dent’s face. Gordon, however, arrives too late at Rachel’s location, and she is killed by the explosion. The Joker now has the horribly disfigured “Two- Face” Harvey Dent on his side to go after Com- missioner Gordon (whom Dent blames for Rachel’s death), while The Joker himself goes after Batman, setting the stage for the film’s final confrontation. We believe THE DARK KNIGHT is fated to be largely remembered, at least for the present gen- eration, as Heath Ledger’s final screen perfor- mance, a fine one for which he received a posthumous Academy Award as Best Actor. Most certainly, Ledger’s performance restores a deadly, nihilistic menace to The Joker and, in this respect, he succeeded in stealing the character back from Jack Nicholson, whose campy performance dis- appointed many Batman fans, even those who otherwise liked Tim Burton’s BATMAN (1989). We are not the first to note that The Joker of THE DARK KNIGHT owes a debt to Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s graphic novel BATMAN: THE KILL- ING JOKE (1988), in which the original Batgirl
(Barbara Gordon, daughter of James Gordon) is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot point blank by the Joker, and in which James Gordon is kidnapped and then psychologically tortured. This graphic novel also portrayed The Joker as confused about his origins, remember- ing his past in one way at one time, then another at a different time—a past he refers to as “mul- tiple choice,” like The Joker of THE DARK KNIGHT. But the graphic novel also contained the impor- tant idea of imagining the relationship between Batman and The Joker as being like the twin forces of Light and Darkness, two sides of the same coin, their relationship analogous to that of an ancient dualistic cosmology such as Manicheanism, in which the forces of Light and Darkness are locked in a neverending battle for supremacy, in constant tension. THE DARK KNIGHT also employs a for- mula found in many westerns, the presentation of two heroes, the “official hero,” one who holds a legitimate position of authority within the society, in this case Harvey Dent, and another hero, who necessarily resides outside the society—the “out- law hero” (or “dark knight”), Batman. Batman is forced into the role of outlaw hero because, as he flees from the police at the film’s end, he tells Commissioner Gordon to assign him the blame for the deaths of those killed by Harvey Dent, be- cause Dent’s White Knight image must remain untarnished.
Thus it will take some time to reveal THE DARK
KNIGHT for the film it actually is, and for its array of performances to be fully comprehended. While the film is an extraordinary feat technically speak- ing, it nonetheless never loses sight of the value of its vast gallery of compelling characters—Aaron Eckhart as “Two-Face” Harvey Dent, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox (a “Q”- like figure) and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes. The movie does contain, however, one scene that in our view is a gross miscalculation, in which The Joker, held in police custody, is bru- tally interrogated by Batman. The scene is a mis- calculation because, uncharacteristically, Batman comes off as a bully, first slamming the Joker’s head into the table, then smashing his open hand with his fist, and eventually throwing him against a wall. One might argue the scene is revealing Batman, in frustration, succumbing to his darker impulses, but in that case, then, he has proven The Joker is right after all in his cynical view of human nature—that order and rationality are illu- sions we maintain to retain our sanity. We are happy to report that Warner’s Blu-ray presentation of THE DARK KNIGHT is spectacular.
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